Times Tables by heart?

At DD's junior school various bits of the times tables were put on large sheets of paper randomly around the walls and they were supposed to absorb it, as in osmosis .....

5) Finish up the remaining chocolates. You have now eaten a whole box of chocolates and learnt a bit of algebra

I feel a bit sick now and DH is annoyed because I ate his favourites .....

That's my point about calculators Elegran - you can hand someone a calculator to solve a problem but often they wouldn't know what numbers to feed in and which buttons to push!!

And if you know your tables and have a good grounding in mental arithmetic you could have a good idea if you have pressed a wrong button and got an answer which is way out!

I was always useless at 'sums' and hated maths with a vengeance, but knowing my x tables has always stood me in good stead and I use them automatically every single day of my life. I think it's a brilliant, if hardly a new idea (teaching yer Granny to suck eggs comes to mind) to get all children to learn them by rote.

Is it only left-wingers who want to ban times tables

Or am I stirring it all up again

5 leftwing gransnetters versus 5 rabid rightwing gransnetters = a lot of hot air

No one has actually said they would ban times tables rosequartz only that focussing on chanting them and testing this is not the best way of teaching children maths for many reasons.

I am not sure if I am included in your generalisations rose but as i have said I do not think anyone has said children should not be taught x tables.
My objection is to use this one small area of learning to measure the whole worth of a school. I know from experience that once something is used in this way other important learning is pushed out of the way because so much hangs on one small aspect... even if it is an important aspect.

I have worked in and with schools for many years and see excellent work by kids and their teachers. This is NOT going to improve anything believe me!

Good point Roseq

Who says they have to be chanted trisher ? Though to be fair to memorise something usually needs a fair bit of repetition.

Pen talk about 2+2=5

I agree with pen's remark. One can be crap at memorising times tables but still good at maths. Which is not to say having times tables at the 'front end of your brain', so to speak, isn't a useful skill. It is. But it's not maths and it doesn't necessarily encourage mathematical thinking which, after all, should be the point of teaching kids about numbers and how they work.

Learning Times Table is still probably the best way to do mental arithmetic, which can be useful even in this day and age.

"Chanting" "Repeating" "Recalling"- if you want to quibble about words these are all involved in rote learning. Dismissing one word does not mean the point is invalid.

Knowing your tables by heart won't make you a mathematician but not knowing them will cause you some delays in your calculations. But Penstemmon is right, this announcement is a packaging job. We are testing more things that are easy to test without asking how useful it is to know the outcome.

Precise language is to be encouraged when trying to make a point or your meaning can be lost (as opposed to mislaid )

Knowing your tables by heart won't make you a mathematician but not knowing them will cause you some delays in your calculations. But Penstemmon is right, this announcement is a packaging job. We are testing more things that are easy to test without asking how useful it is to know the outcome.

And that Lilygran just about sums it all up.

Like others, I still know my times tables and am frequently glad that I do. I remember teaching my son with the aid of a jig saw - only the correct answer fitted with the sum. I have to say he absolutely hated it. I must ask him if he still knows - or ever really learned - his times tables.

I was top of the class for knowing my tables by heart, (having a teacher for a mum), but way down the class as a mathematician. I found it difficult to apply that knowledge to anything more complicated than breaking down fractions, so it wasn't very useful to me anyway.
I do feel very strongly, however, about children learning "avoir" and "être" and all the irregular verbs by heart in foreign languages, and dare I say it, tests in this area wouldn't go amiss. But that's another story.

That won't be happen Lillie. They have trouble recruiting French teachers so tend to leave the subject alone.

I wonder why we English are so bad at languages? My DH and I both attended grammar school, are graduates and well qualified in our own fields but when we tried learning Spanish a few years ago we couldn't keep anything in our heads. Perhaps it's an age thing.

The times tables are not meant to turn us into mathematicians, by the way, although it might help.

I have always been glad that I knew my tables, they've often been useful in checking shop receipts and so on. But knowing the trouble GS1 already has with the endless spelling tests my heart sinks at the thought of yet another test for a very clever boy to fail at.

I am terrible at maths but do know my times tables and find I still use them. DS 40 could say his backwards and forwards by the end of grade four. His teacher gave each child a gold star when they could recite them to him, when they were ready. We then moved to England when DS was in grade five and it wasn't until the middle of the school year that DS's teacher said they were going to learn their times tables. I thought it was being left a bit late.

I imagine some of those children from DS's grade five class would have fared like my DD now 34. I tried to help her learn her times tables. I said them with her, bought her a cd with them being sung, we had a times table poster. DD was not willing to try to learn them and she didn't have DS's grade four teacher. She found it very difficult years later when studying nursing and not allowed to use a calculator.

I believe times tables are very important. They can be taught in a fun way. It's similar to GS 7 he recently changed schools. First school he had to learn twenty words a week for a spelling test. That was beyond him and he learnt none. At the new school he was given six words a week to learn, each week he got the six words correct. A bit of common sense in how things are taught makes a difference.

Anya I am unclear what your 2+2=5 comment refers to.

I cannot say it any clearer: Learning tables is a good thing (btw I am a socialist! )

Using a test done on a computer under strict time constraint to measure a child's recall of x tables and then using this to judge how good a school is is nonsense!!

In some schools the phonic test shows good results but the children's reading and writing levels are average but in other schools with lower phonic test scores children do better in reading and writing. Obviously there will be places where both are strong and both weak.

What I am trying to illustrate is that you need to see the big picture to make a judgement about the quality of education not focus on a few easy to measure aspects.

It seems to me to be a case of it ain't what you do but the way that you do it matters here. We all agree that its very useful to know the times tables. Good teachers use a multiplicity of ways of teaching and embedding them in children's minds. Those games mentioned earlier eg Buzz are a great way ahead. However, education can't always be fun. Sometimes plain old concentration, listening and thinking are required. Are modern children less likely to possess these skills these days? That's an honest enquiry btw. I wonder about children brought up on 10 minute easy watching tv programmes and no requirement to listen for any length of time.

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/425601/PRIMARY_national_curriculum.pdf

Look at p.126 onwards for what 9-11 year olds are already being taught in Maths.

That's interesting Penstemmon. In our day we learnt our tables in ascending order, whereas these days I see they are taught 2, 5, 10, then 3, 4, 8 a year later, then finally 6, 7, 9. That would imply they are using the tables step by step for other mathematical skills, so surely testing of the tables on their own will be a flawed exercise.

My thirteen year old grandson loves the fact that he is better at his tables than his eight year old sister. That doesn't happen often as he is autistic.
She has learnt them by rote, but I have taught him them as facts to remember which is what he is good at. It makes everything else in maths faster.
He says maths is fun, and algebra is just puzzles.

Anyone notice that Nicky Morgan would not answer when asked what seven eights were? It was I will get asked this all the time and everyone will remember the one I got wrong. Why would she get one wrong? She's older than eleven, isn't she?